The ship is anchor’d safe and sound.
Read the original on ethanmarcotte.com ↗Sir Patrick Stewart has died. I don’t really know what to say — words really are failing me right now. So I’ll start here:
I grew up on Star Trek.
When I call up fond memories from my childhood, the happiest all involved watching the original series with my dad. Every week we’d huddle up around the television — either the one in our family room in the basement, or the small one perched in my parents’ bedroom — and settle in for an hour of space fantasy. It was the first time I remember being transported by television, thrown into a future arrayed in vivid, almost psychedelic colors, all flashing across our tiny TV set as this weird and motley crew traipsed about space.
I didn’t get The Next Generation when it first came on the air. I was just a kid, mind, but if I’d had the vocabulary at the time I probably would’ve said it felt too calm. Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard couldn’t have been more different from William Shatner’s James T. Kirk if he’d tried. Where Kirk was daring and brilliant, Picard had a philosopher’s heart; where Kirk was cunning, Picard was curious. He always looked to empathize with the unknown — to understand.
Ten year-old me was probably impatient, and tired of all the talking — just get to the space battles already. But as I got older, and as I kept watching the show, Picard’s quiet, empathetic depth was exactly what won me over.
A friend once told me that every Star Trek series presents a different philosophy of work: of how people collaborate, how teams and organizations function. Watching Picard run a staff meeting might’ve been hell on my ten year-old self, but I came to realize those scenes are the heart of the show. They were my first taste of what leadership should look like: a roomful of distinct voices being brought together for their expertise and opinion, with a captain asking questions before arriving at a decision. And look, I know it sounds boring. But Patrick Stewart’s Picard moved through every one of his scenes with compassion and moral clarity, and to a degree I’ve always found both comforting and inspiring.
This show — its characters, its fables, its unwavering hope for and in humanity — is written deep, deep in my bones. Which is all to say that, yes, news of Stewart’s passing feels like a stone in my chest.
Of course, I realize part of what I’m grieving is the distance between the now and the then. There are just so many years between me and that young kid watching Star Trek with his family: an hour each week we shared together that felt easy, safe, and happy. And Patrick Stewart was at the center of that.
I never met the man, but wish I could’ve thanked him. I’ll just have to carry that gratitude with me a little longer.
This has been “The ship is anchor’d safe and sound.” a post from Ethan’s journal.